DMK, AIADMK in election mode with Tamil Nadu assembly polls next year

With the assembly elections scheduled in May next year, the ruling DMK and the opposition AIADMK in Tamil Nadu have put their party apparatus in election mode and are organising rallies in different parts of the state.
DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, who had not taken part in the campaigning during the Lok Sabha polls last year due to health problems, has started addressing public meetings.
AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa, who had virtually launched her party's electioneering at Coimbatore last month, addressed a public meeting at Tiruchirapalli early this month and is planning to tour the state extensively from the next month.
Not to be seen lagging behind, DMK too has been organising meetings at places where Jayalalithaa had her party rallies.
Karunanidhi had already addressed a public meeting at Coimbatore in the state's eastern part, considered to be the
AIADMK's bastion. The party had won most of the seats in the
region in the last assembly polls and Lok Sabha elections.
In a bid to win over the region's voters, the DMK organised the World Classical Tamil meet in June with great pomp and show and spent a considerable amount for the development of the Textile town, popularly known as the Manchester of South India.
The party also organised a massive public meeting in the town last month.
To counter the AIADMK's Tiruchirappalli meet, DMK is organising a public meeting there on September 8 to be addressed by the chief minister. Transport minister and DMK's Tiruchirapalli District secretary K Nehru has been supervising the arrangements for the meet.
On the other hand, Jayalalithaa is planning to address a meeting at Madurai, considered to be the stronghold of Karunanidhi's elder son, Union fertilisers minister MK Alagiri.
Alagiri, DMK's South Zone Secretary, has been touring the region extensively to galvanise the cadre. He recently visited Andipatti in Theni, which had returned Jayalalithaa to the Tamil Nadu Assembly, and distributed over 9,000 bottles of a health drink.
Jayalalithaa had alleged that these bottles were stolen from a lorry consignment.
At the rallies, there is no dearth of mudslinging.
While Jayalalithaa has started calling Karunanidhi as 'evil force from Tirukuvalai', the birth place of the chief minister, the DMK cadre has started describing her as 'Vaidha Rani' (queen of adjournments) for seeking adjournments in the wealth case pending against her in a Bangalore court. The DMK's youth wing had also organised an agitation to highlight this.
jayalalithaa had slammed the protest and said it was unheard of in political history that a ruling party was organising a demonstration against an opposition leader.
In the midst of these developments, some utterances by Congress leaders against the DMK government have become a
thorn in the relationship between the two parties.
Former Union minister EVKS Elangovan, a vocal critic of the DMK, started attacking the government, despite the TNCC imposing a gag on its leaders speaking on the alliance issue.
Apparently trying to wean the Congress away from DMK, Jayalalithaa has been dropping hints that she is not averse toan alliance with the Congress and made her intentions clear at
the two public meetings she had addressed.
At Coimbatore, she asked her partymen to launch the election work and leave the question of alliance to her and promised to have an 'alliance' of their liking. At Tiruchirapalli, she said she would join 'hands' (Congress election symbol is the Hand) with anybody to dislodge the DMK government.
The PMK, a backward-Vanniyar community based party which had snapped its ties with the AIADMK after drawing a blank in the Lok Sabha polls, is yet to decide its strategy for the assembly elections. It is keeping its cards close to its chest, but its founder S Ramadoss has been advocating a front headed by the Congress.